Mites cause tremendous economic losses in horticultural plants and agricultural crops. In particular, mites devastate citrus and pome fruit by feeding on leaves and ripening fruit.
To control mite infestations, plants are treated several times during the growing season with commercial miticides. In spite of multiple applications of the commercial miticides available today, damage to plants caused by mite infestations still occurs. Accordingly, there is ongoing research to discover new and more effective miticidal agents which do not require multiple applications to protect plants from mite infestations.
Certain pyrimidine compounds which are useful as miticidal agents are described in WO 94/02470. However, that publication does not disclose any residual miticidal activity.
It is, therefore, an object of the present invention to provide a method for improving the residual control of mites.
It is also an object of the present invention to provide a method for prolonging the protection of plants from mite infestations.
Those and other objects of the present invention will become more apparent from the detailed description thereof set forth below.